My Genealogy Hound

DR. H. T. COOPER, one of the first settlers at Lowell, Kearney county, was born in Venango county, Pa., May 22, 1828. His parents were John and Nancy (Acorns) Cooper, the former a native of New York, and the latter of Pennsylvania. His grandfather was Samuel Cooper, who was a second lieutenant in the War of 1812. John Cooper died in 1840, and Nancy Cooper in 1874. In 1868, Dr. Cooper emigrated to Montgomery county, Iowa, where he resided for two years, and then came to Lowell, Nebr., in the spring of 1871. He was a practicing physician, having entered upon the profession in 1856. He pre-empted a piece of land near the Platte river and continued the practice of his profession, and in 1872 he was employed to attend the sick at Fort Kearney, which position he held until the fort was abandoned. When the Doctor first located here, his nearest neighbor was twenty miles east of him. Lowell was laid out in May, 1871, and flourished for a few years — becoming one of the principal trading points in the West. The town began to decline in 1874, when the county seat was changed to Minden.

Dr. H. T. Cooper was the first probate judge of Kearney county, having been elected in 1872, and has also held various local offices since. He has always been a republican in politics, and is a member of the Masonic order.

In his early days in Nebraska, the Doctor saw many herds of buffalo and antelope numbering up to the hundreds, and has been a member of several noted hunting parties. In 1873 he joined the surveyors and other officials of the St. Joe and Republican Railroad in a buffalo hunt, and relates many thrilling tales of similar expeditions. In 1876, the Doctor married Catherine Carpenter. Nancy Cooper bore the maiden name of Nancy Acorns, and was a native of New York. On the eve of the blowing up of Fort Erie by Gen. Wayne, and the sacking of Buffalo, Nancy, with her sister and David King, embarked in a canoe at the mouth of the French creek, and followed it to where it empties into the Alleghany near Franklin, the county seat of Venango county. In that year, 1813, Samuel Cooper came with his family across the Alleghanies from Westmoreland county, Pa. Nancy Cooper was a school teacher at Titusville, which is twelve miles up the Alleghany from Oil city, Pa.

John Cooper was born in 1800; Nancy Cooper was born in 1805.

H. T. Cooper was born in poverty and raised in the woods. During the administration of Martin Van Buren, under his free trade policy, John Cooper lost all his property. John Cooper died in 1841, leaving a wife with five helpless children, three girls and two boys, H. T. Cooper being the oldest, and Fulson the youngest.

At the death of President W. H. Harrison, who lived one month only after his inauguration, our subject and his mother started for Ohio, and at Barnesville young Cooper found employment and also received the rudiments of an education. The mother and the other members of her family in a short time moved to Belleville, Ohio, where for two years our subject worked for Jesse Morris. Mr. Morris still resides in Belleville at the age of one hundred and seven years. From this point Mr. Cooper went to Cumberland, Ohio, where he began the study of medicine under the preceptorship of Evan Cagill; thence he went to Afton, Iowa, thence via St. Louis up the Missouri river to Plattsmouth Nebr., in 1868, reaching Lincoln in March, 1871. He filed his pre-emption claim on the half section 20, east of section 24, Lowell town site. He built a house, broke four acres of ground, and planted it in corn. When this corn was soft, the Pawnees came on a hunt, and as Mr. Cooper had a well noted for its good water, the Indians surrounded it. Mr. Cooper was at the time about four miles away hunting wood, and in crossing the mouth of Whisky run on his way home, he caught sight of his house surrounded by the redskins. He at once took in the situation, and started for his farm on a full run, but before he had got within two miles of his house he met the Pawnee chief, who cried out — “No hurt the pretty squaw,” thus relieving Mr. Cooper’s anxiety.

In the fall of 1871, the Doctor built a house on the site of Lowell, where he still resides, and where he and family enjoy the respect of all who know them, and there are very few who do not. That winter was the hardest of any the Doctor has experienced since coming to the state, a constant and severe frost lasting fully ten consecutive weeks. It was almost a daily occurrence for scouts to bring in some man lost while on a hunt and found frozen to death. With the exception of the grasshopper raids and the drought, times since then have been fairly prosperous in Nebraska.